Wasenough, damn it.
I blew out a breath and let my shoulders fall.
I didn’t need his life story to enjoy the services I’d hired him for. I didn’t need to make small talk with him, or worry aboutentertaining him, or wonder what circumstances had led him to stay somewhere other than at his Queens apartment. He was here for one reason only.
I wanted to own him. If only for a little while.
The memory of him on his knees for me in the back room of the plane made me shift uncomfortably in my seat. Jett’s mouth was as amazing as I’d remembered. Better, if such a thing were possible.
And he was being compensated for it generously, I reminded myself. I owed him nothing more.
But I did owe the Paxis Council my thorough knowledge of the global shipping landscape, the movement of contraband around the world, and recent technological innovations my company had been working on. So I went back to prepping for the tournament.
I tried not to notice every time Jett shifted or made a small sound. But when he wrapped his arms around himself, I nodded to Kayla, silently asking for a blanket and indicating she should drape it over him. He jerked awake when he felt the blanket land on his chest, but when he realized Kayla was only seeing to his comfort, he relaxed and shot her a grateful grin.
She returned his smile and disappeared back to the galley.
I pretended not to notice Jett’s eyes move to me. But I felt the heat of them all the same.
After a few long moments, he shifted in his seat and turned to gaze out the window. Within a few moments, he was softly snoring once more.
And then it was my turn to watch him. Again.
Kayla might not have noticed Jett’s knee-jerk reaction to being suddenly awakened, but I had. He’d looked ready for an attack. Like someone who’d slept on the streets or been in other precarious situations.
Again, not surprising. But it was another piece of the puzzle that made Jett such a strange combination of contradictions.
He sometimes came off as wealthier than he was—an act, I assumed, to fit in better with wealthy clients. On the flight from Atlanta, he’d been wearing nicer clothes than he had in the past—more like a business traveler than someone planning to couch-surf with a friend while looking for a barista job or another dancing gig. He definitely didn’t sound like someone from small-town South Carolina either, which might be for the same reason.
But I suddenly wanted to know… where else had he lived over the years? What jobs had he been taking to get by?
He’d mentioned a family card game his “dads” enjoyed, cousins on his father’s side living in Montana, and a scar he’d gotten from a sister, though the background check had shown him only having a mother and no siblings.
Did he invent stories about an imagined family as a kind of coping mechanism? Or did he know and have some kind of relationship with his father? Were those chapters of his life closed? Was his family unable to help him financially?
My curiosity was piqued, which was annoying as fuck. I didn’t have time to be so intrigued by someone I was only using for sex. He wasn’t a security risk, and that was the only thing I needed to concern myself with.
I focused on the work in front of me for the rest of the flight and tried like hell not to let Jett’s soft snores distract me.
We were met at the Salerno airport by a driver who quickly gathered our luggage and led us to my grandfather’s old Rolls for the drive to the villa. I slipped into the back seat, expecting Jett to follow. When he didn’t, I realized he was talking to the driver in broken Italian as he helped the man load the bags. The sound of his friendly attempts at conversation was unexpected.
“You speak Italian?” I asked when he finally took the seat beside me.
“Not really,” he said with a laugh. “I did a few lessons on my phone over the weekend.”
“Have you been to Italy before?”
Jett’s cheeks flushed. “Is this where you reveal how small-town I am?”
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you. But you’ve been to Amsterdam, so I wondered if maybe…”
“If maybe…” His eyes flicked up to the driver. “Anotherjobhad given me more travel experience?”
I shrugged and pressed the button to raise the privacy screen.
“I’ve been to some places. What about you?” he asked. “You’ve probably been all over the world with your job.”
He avoided answering the question despite the privacy screen. I wondered if it was due to his desire to avoid mentioning other men he’d been with or if it was due to his embarrassment at his lack of travel. I decided to let him evade the question.
